Pittsburgh’s Real Estate Market - From Worst to First

Both Pittsburgh’s residential real estate market and commercial real estate market have received praise for their strength in recent days.

Moody’s ranked the Pittsburgh commercial real estate market the best in the nation in its latest survey of the market in 60 metropolitan regions. Back in 2005, it was ranked among the worst for owners of commercial real estate. The honor was covered in both the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review if you are interested in reading more.

Residential homeowners in Pittsburgh received similar news. ABC News and Forbes, in a joint survey, declared Pittsburgh one of the nation’s 25 strongest housing markets. They expect the market for Pittsburgh homes to bottom in the second half of 2009, and the prices to fall a mere .3% more before reaching that bottom.

Of course, today’s strong real estate markets don’t resemble the price appreciation and frenzy of the boom times. It may be that Pittsburgh has received the praise only because prices haven’t fallen as much as they have in other cities. But even that may be sufficient cause to celebrate given the condition of some of the nation’s housing markets.

16 responses so far ↓

Just days after I wrote this article, I learned that Simon Property Group has ended its efforts to build The Summit at Cranberry, anticipated in 2007 to be the largest mall in the region and expected to open in 2010, over a dispute over who would fund $20-24 million of highway improvements around the area.

Just goes to show that, in today’s economy, there are problems in every real estate market.

I was pretty skeptical when I heard about their original plans for the mall in Cranberry - it’s something they’ve been discussing for years now with no real progress. So not too surprising that it never will come to be, especially since the traffic impact fees are pretty hefty in Cranberry. In a way I am thankful, I remember a day when you could get across Cranberry in less than 5 minutes, now it takes about 30 fighting all that traffic.

But I think the market all in all is doing very well - we work with a lot of real estate agents and they’ve been mostly pretty busy, despite negative degree weather, snow, and ice

Consider yourself lucky. Try being a realtor in FL. Every other home is being short sold and nobody is getting off the fence, they are attempting to wait until the bottom, whatever that means. We are all in for a long ride…